California Adopts Disclosure Law for Standdardized Test

California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. recently signed a law that
makes California the second state, after New York, to require some form
of disclosure of correct answers on the standardized
student-achievement tests used mainly for college admissions.

The measure applies only to two types of test--the Scholastic
Aptitude Test (sat) administered by the College Entrance Examination
Board (ceeb) based in New York, and the examinations prepared by the
American College Testing Service (acts) which is located in Ohio.

Twenty-two states have considered legislation that would require
some kind of disclosure of admissions-test answers, according to Alice
J. Irby, a vice-president of Educational Testing Service (ets), the
Princeton-based company that develops the sat's. But only New York and
California now require "extensive disclosure," she said.

The California bill, which does not require disclosure in the case
of graduate-level entrance examinations, was written by state senator
Milton Marks, Republican of San Francisco. It requires that half of the
two types of standardized tests administered each year be open to
disclosure. (And according to an already-existing California law, the
test sponsor would have to test at least 3,000 students per year for
this rule to apply.)

New York's Admissions Testing Law, which took effect in January
1980, also requires disclosure of answers on graduate-level entrance
examinations.

Errors Discovered

Following passage of the New York law, two incidents occurred that
led the College Board to make disclosure a nationwide policy in March
of 1981. Students in Florida and New York discovered errors in their
exams that eventually led the testing organization to raise the scores
of some 269,000 students across the country.

The increased costs resulting from disclosure have largely been
passed on to test-takers.

A package of disclosure materials, which contains test questions and
answers, costs $6.50. And the increased costs, brought on because ets
had to begin making up to 10 new tests each year instead of the normal
six or seven, was partially absorbed by the company and partially
offset by a surcharge paid by New York test-takers.

Because disclosure is now policy of the College Board, the
California law, which was initiated before the policy was announced,
"is simply a reflection of the College Board's policy," according to
Ms. Irby.

The law, however, will still affect the acts, which does not have a
national disclosure policy.

The California bill originally included disclosure of graduate
entrance examinations, but lobbying pressure, particularly from the
California Medical Association (cma), eventually resulted in a bill
amended to cover only undergraduate admissions tests.

In New York's testing law, admissions tests for graduate school are
also subject to disclosure, but because of an injunction won by the
American Association of Medical Colleges (aamc), test sponsors do not
have to disclose medical-school test answers.

The matter is a subject of a lawsuit against the state of New York
by the aamc that is languishing in a New York district court. The suit,
which argues that the law is a violation of the copyright law, says
that the type of material used in mcat, unlike material in the other
tests, can be exhausted, so the law infringes on the medical
association's ownership of the questions.

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